Articles & Research - Page 2 of 2

How women get to the top

This is a great article publishing in Harvard Business Review summarising the findings of a study which aimed to identify the code for women’s leadership success. A central theme is that females need to be resilient whilst taking risks. Resilience is a skill that can be developed. Organisations and individuals must continuously monitor their resilience levels, taking early action to address any areas where it becomes compromised. AURA is a new tool developed by Austen Advisory to do just this. … Read More»

Nudge employees to build resilience

The Rise of Behavioural Economics and Its Influence on Organisations

Behavioural economics is a relatively new field that combines insights from psychology, judgment, and decision making, and economics to generate a more accurate understanding of human behaviour. Richard Thaler, the ‘father’ of this discipline suggests that there are many opportunities to “nudge” people’s behaviour by making subtle changes to the context in which they make decisions.… Read More»

Chronic stress and the brain

I attended a fascinating talk on ‘Chronic stress and the brain ‘by Dr. Mithu Storoni, a prominent neuroscientist and researcher from London. She shared the latest research insights into the effects of stress on the brain, citing breakthrough scientific studies which help to explain mental, emotional, physical and behavioural changes experienced when under long periods of stress. There was a Q&A session enabling two-way discussion around some relevant and front of mind issues.

Manage Your Stress by Monitoring Your Body’s Reactions to It

Leaders sometimes check in with everyone but themselves.

Great article about the importance of understanding how pressure is affecting you – highlights the importance for constantly monitoring your emotional, physical and mental wellbeing to prevent burnout. The early signs of burnout often get overlooked. Employees and businesses need to recognise and unearth areas of undue stress. Austen Advisory is a launching a new tool called AURA which can help do just this.

Augmented Reality & Assessment

Personally, I am not into online gaming but continue to be amazed by its all power to absorb and grasp people’s full attention. Most recently, I read about two people who fell off a cliff in the USA whilst playing Pokemon Go. Just imagine if employees put this level of attention into their work!

Absorption or ‘flow’ is one component of employee engagement – where you are so focused on your work, you fail to notice things around you or time passing by. We all know that increasing engagement even by a small amount can have a massive impact on organisational success via increased productivity.

This brings me to think about how augmented reality can be used in the workplace. I see an exciting role for it in recruitment and development. This article shares how some companies are already using virtual reality in assessing candidates and an interesting vision for future augmented reality realistic job previews and assessments

Read full article here

Its not always the stereotypical personality traits that predict job performance…

An interesting piece of research highlighting that IT programming ability is most strongly predicted by ‘openness’ – a trait related to being creative and imaginative.

To what extent do hiring managers assess this when recruiting programmers? My guess is not much; this is easily done through an online personality questionnaire prior to interview. This should always be one input to the hiring decision but could be the insight that really uncovers hidden talent.